


A Piece of It

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Joker (2019)
Genre: AU: Oh God There's TWO of them, Blood and Violence, Blow Jobs, Bondage, Emotional Constipation, M/M, Murder, Protectiveness, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:40:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23198716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: It's not so much that Joker wants be to keep Arthur safe, rather more that he doesn't trust anyone else to hurt him.
Relationships: Arthur Fleck/Joker (DCU)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 48
Collections: Anywhere I Lay My Head I Will Call My Home





	A Piece of It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mr-finch (soubriquet)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/gifts).



> Timeline wise, as far as this AU goes, this would be set after the other fics in the series, several years after Joker returns to Gotham. Arthur is frequently hired by various gangs in Gotham to wreak havoc on people's property, generally as a warning. Joker is working as a contract mercenary while he puts together his plan to rob Gotham's criminal organizations blind. 
> 
> Sometimes they bump into each other.

The universe doesn’t give a shit about anyone, not the nebulous Whole of Humanity and certainly not any specific individuals. It’s sheer dumb luck that has brought them both to the same place, near enough the same time, and it’s only reflexive, eager violence that lets Joker come away the winner of a short, ugly fight.

Short, ugly, but brutal. The son of a bitch suffered, if only briefly. 

He leaves the body on the linoleum, the slowly spreading shadow of blood neatly skipped over as he crosses the kitchen to where Arthur lays in a heap. Judging by the general extensive property damage, the kid had been hired to trash the place -- that it was supposed to be deserted. 

Generally speaking, Arthur wasn’t the kind of self destructive that lead to walking into violence unprepared.

Joker will have to do a little digging. If someone set the kid up, sent him where he’d be guaranteed trouble without preparing him for it, Joker wants to know about it. He’d like to have a little conversation with that person, up close and personal. 

That can wait, though. The kid is unconscious but breathing, and he didn’t seem to be struggling particularly hard for breath. Judging by the sound the vic’s bat had made against the back of Arthur’s head, the kid would likely have quite a headache later, a nice lump to remember the whole sorry job by, but nothing looked broken or lastingly damaged.

Humming softly to himself, Joker straightens up from his crouch, content that it would be a minute before the kid tried to go anywhere. He can never remember the words to this particular ear worm, but every christing time he’s trapped in a taxi and it comes on the radio, it embeds itself in his consciousness for hours.

He has to dig through a few drawers before he finds what he’s looking for, but he _does_ find it. No point in keeping his searching tidy, he dumps the contents of most of the kitchen drawers on the floor and kicks the ensuing mess out of his way as he hops back over to Arthur side, clucking his tongue at the way the kid’s gone all relaxed and boneless. 

Greasepaint is gonna smear all over the tile. 

On second thought, glancing over his shoulder at the cooling corpse in the entryway and the wreckage from Arthur's rampage and his own search, maybe that's the least of the mess to be worried about.

Humming again, a bit more jaunty with each motion made, he drags Arthur's arms behind his back and uses the first of the zip ties he'd found to bind those long-boned hands out of the way, locked against the small of his back. One tie to bind his right wrist to his left elbow, a second to bind left wrist to right elbow, and then, just in case, a third in the center. Then, fingers curled in the loop of the final zip tie, he hauls Arthur to sit, back to the counters, and binds his legs together as well, ankle to knee. 

Arthur can struggle, and Joker's left his mouth free so he can yell, but he's not moving until Joker lets him. 

Standing back to admire his handiwork, Joker doesn't have to wait long for Arthur to muddle his way back awake. He can see the slower signs happening, the little flutter of eyelashes, the press of his lips together, a low hiss through Arthur's teeth as he registers his headache. Tension, the stillness, Arthur's eyes flashing open and -- ahh. Now _that_ was what made the kid so fantastically irresistible. 

Not even aware yet who might have him, there's no sign of terror on Arthur's face. He goes from a dozing, uncomfortable wake-up and straight to rage, only relaxing a little when he locks on to Joker's painted up face.

Two of a kind, Joker can't help thinking. Someone said that to him once, _look at us, two of a kind._

He'd been fond of them, too.

"Ha ha," Arthur says, all flat. At the edges of the painted slash of Arthur's grin, Joker can see a messy bruise darkening up on one side. Given that Joker had gone to work on the guy in the entryway after he'd managed only a single crack shot hit, it must have been the force of Arthur hitting the floor that left that mark. "Let me go now."

"Hmmm," Joker says, tucking one gloved hand under his jaw and cocking his head to one side, like he's considering something. A fine piece of art, perhaps, or a difficult puzzle. "Hmm hm hm."

"Joker," Arthur says sternly, so unafraid now. He'd been shy once, Joker thinks. He's almost certain. "Untie me."

Joker drops, then, falling into a neat squat at Arthur's side, close enough Arthur could grab him if his hands were free. Close enough they each can feel how warm the other is, close enough it's hard to resist touching. "No," Joker purrs, grinning. "I don't think I'm going to."

" _Joker,_ " Arthur snaps, writhing, then, but his attempt at anger is betrayed by the way he's grinning too, struggling to slip bonds he's not got any chance of breaking. "This isn't _funn_ -"

The sleeves of Joker's shirt are sodden with blood. He'd be amazed if it all came out this time; when the fabric drags over his skin, it leaves thin trails of wet red. When he snaps his hand out and grabs the front of Arthur's shirt, stilling him and keeping him from tipping himself over, the drag of the wet fabric is cold. 

Arthur shuts up immediately, eyes big and hungry on Joker's face as he leans in. This close, Joker knows, Arthur can see past the paint. He can see past the cheap suit, past the died, lanky hair, past the years that have gathered up between them. He can see past the scars.

He knows, because this close, Joker can see Arthur again. Arthur who used to draw, who liked Tom Waits better than Nick Cave, presumably because he was genuinely insane.

And that bruise. He can see that bruise taking shape, left from violence some asshole managed, and that sparks something in Joker.

“I think I should leave you tied up like this,” Joker drawls, hauling Arthur in, pulling him closer and feeling how he doesn’t struggle anymore. “Think I should leave you like this all the time, lock you up somewhere quiet, where no one knows where you are but me.”

"Why," Arthur asks, while Joker thinks about how neatly, it seems, their mouths fit together. "So it's easier to find me after _you_ leave?"

When Joker had first slipped into the room, the softness of his steps muffled entirely by the sounds of struggle and the heavy breathing of the now dead man, his mark had been standing over Arthur, an old wooden bat raised over his head. Before he’d made it into the kitchen, he’d heard the heavy _crack_ of the bat hitting someone’s skull, had been, in the moment, delighted by the utter filthy chaos of human violence.

Seeing that it was _Arthur_ on the floor, about to get a few new dents put in him, had slit the throat of his delight and poured poison over his intention to draw out tonight’s festivities. He’d launched himself at the man’s back, driving his knife in under his ribs, and let the blade break from the handle as he tore the man, screaming, from in front of Arthur. 

The contract had dictated stabbing as the method of execution. Luckily, the kitchen was _full_ of knives. And a screwdriver! That had helped smother the flames of rage licking up Joker’s throat, settled him back into the usual manageable simmer of anger and furious energy.

Having Arthur alone, manageable, tied up and, for whatever given value of the concept exists around him, _safe,_ douses out what's left of that anger. For a brief moment, with Arthur, the violence becomes simply fun, not a clawing animal looking for escape, for escalation. 

Arthur, though, is _all_ anger. Whatever sparked in him before they parted had flared up while Joker played at war, it had burnt everything else away. A metamorphosis not unlike Joker’s own, one he should have at least gotten to witness. Arthur is a quietly burning beacon, anger against an unjust world letting him go unnoticed, but a fire can detonate any number of munitions, regardless of why it was lit. 

“I _feel_ ,” Joker drawls, letting the word roll a little on his tongue, “like _you_ used to have a better sense of self-preservation.”

For all that Arthur often looks at him like he’s just begging for pain, Joker wonders these days if he’s not the masochist here. He feels good, these moments alone with Arthur -- even when Arthur’s lip curls up, something sharp in the way he sneers so subtly the makeup almost hides it.

“Self-preservation,” he repeats, so bitter it might choke him, the softest scoff of laughter under the word. “Like you’re the expert on that.”

There’s blood on Joker’s sleeves, soaked into the cuffs of his tacky purple shirt. When he shoves Arthur against the cabinets, hands pressed to either side of the kid’s face, thumb digging with brutal intention into the start of that bruise under Arthur’s eye, the blood smears against Arthur’s cheeks. Joker swings his leg over Arthur’s narrow hips, pinning him bodily, kissing him like he wants to devour him.

Before, they never had this. They never had the chance, they never had the _guts_. 

Who’s fault was that? Who stole that future from them, who gave it away?

There’s a reason why Arthur is all anger now, and Joker eats his fill of it. Eats up the way Arthur opens to him so eagerly, the way his teeth have become sharp, latching on to his lip and keeping him when Joker tries to pull back. 

He tastes like war, like a week alone in the desert with your face burning off. He tastes like neglect, like a joke that falls flat.

All the shyness in him has burnt out, if it was ever there. Was it? What does The Joker know? He can _think_ he remembers anything, but that doesn’t make it so.

“I know how to take care of pretty things I’m not ready to lose,” he rasps, pressing his forehead to Arthur’s, holding him so that the panting of their breath mingles, so they're breathing each other’s air, never quite enough oxygen. 

Arthur makes some raw, unhappy sound. It’s not laughter; laughter doesn’t claw and catch and come through the teeth looking for pain. Laughter, even mean, comes from somewhere funny, somewhere happy, and that is not a happy sound.

Still, Arthur doesn’t fight it when Joker kisses him again, working his way down the edge of Arthur’s jaw, nipping at the skin of his throat just above the collar of his ill-fitting shirt. He can feel how Arthur drops his head back, giving him room, feel the way his hips arch up from the floor at each graze of Joker’s teeth, the way his breathing has shifted to something a little gaspier, eager as his pulse thunders under Joker’s tongue.

Arthur snarls when Joker pulls away, gasps out eager approval when Joker picks apart the button-fly of his ugly trousers, babbles breathy nonsensical praise when Joker swallows his cock and blows him like it’s the only reason either of them are alive. If Arthur hates Joker the way he hates the rest of the world, then at least like this he loves him almost as much.

When he finishes, moaning at the sensation of Joker sucking him clean, Arthur’s wire-tense body finally, slowly, relaxes under him. Arthur breathes ragged little gasps of laugher, like wonder, as Joker pats himself down looking for a knife, licking cum from his lips and putting on the air of a man profoundly confused by his lack of knife. 

In the end, he pulls one of the sharper things still stuck in the corpse on the other side of the kitchen free, wiping it off on his trouser leg before cutting the zip ties free in the reverse order he’d secured them. Arthur is compliant throughout, eager to get his hands in Joker’s pants and return the favour. 

Nobody gets him off like Arthur. Nobody else makes it feel like a thing that matters, that he wants to have go on and on. 

They end up tangled on the floor, swapping the taste of each other’s cum with their spit as they kiss in the ruination they’ve left of this poor bastard’s kitchen. Joker feels close, like he could almost go again, sucking Arthur’s tongue into his mouth and wondering what Arthur would say if he took him upstairs to the dead bastard’s bed.

He’s fucked other men. It leaves him agitated, bored and frustrated for reasons he can’t name. Sex is a great way to kick off a job because by the time he’s cum all he wants is the excitement of real violence. Action that means something, _does_ something.

Before, he thinks -- before the fog of what happened in that tent, before a desert that seemed endless and a knife reminding him to never stop laughing -- sex wasn’t like that. Sex reset the twitchy need to leave a mark on the world, it was something meaningful on it’s own. And with Arthur, it wasn’t ever angry.

Sex, like laughter, was happy. 

It’s always like this with Arthur, anymore. Sex thats frantic, edged with anger, the lull of the meter being reset, something calm and ugly brewing in Joker’s chest. 

Sometime, he figures, he might figure out how to explain it to Arthur. How the boy he loved died while anger was burning Arthur into this hard thing laying in his arms now. How he can’t remember, not quite, not really, who that boy was or how to be him. How to even _want_ to be him.

Explain that, like this, with Arthur, he comes as close as he can to feeling something again, something that matters, something that nourishes the way violence does, without breaking him or bruising.

That he thinks he remembers love being gentle, but when Arthur looks at him he can see how he wants it to hurt, so he makes it hurt. He can feel how Arthur wants to bleed, so he makes him bleed.

He doesn’t have the words yet. He’s got words for just about everything else the world throws at him, but he flinches at the idea of trying to explain any of this. Someday, he thinks, sometime.

Tonight, he kisses Arthur long and slow in ruin of a kitchen that reeks like a butchershop, and when the desperate thunder of Arthur’s pulse slows to something easier, he kisses him a little more, and then he leaves.

Everything remains unsaid, but words, he thinks, like everything else he likes in this world, are cheap. He’ll find them eventually.


End file.
